7 comments:

Okay, here’s an admission: Yet another recent Nobel laureate whom I’ve never even heard of, and this confession coming from one who has considered himself very well-read and pretty well versed in literature. This is not to diminish Ms. Muller’s achievement, and I congratulate her. I just wonder if, as an American and English-speaker only, I’m somehow missing out on a lot of erstwhile magnificent literature because it isn’t translated into my mother tongue, and if this is so, why? Are we so overwhelmed by the Dan Browns and Stephanie Meyers and Oprah’s choices that a world of great literature is being eclipsed here by the shadow of towering blockbusters?

She's not that well-known in Germany either but she is very well respected and has received a number of European prizes already.She's no Dan Brown in terms of books sales and (thankfully) a whole lot of other things. But I digress.I see that she's not translated much into English which reflects her lack of world-wide appeal/popularity but some of her work can be found in English, i.e. titles like: The Appointment, Traveling on One Leg, and The Passport. Her writing is, for the most part, political and her language tends to be a bit hermetic.She writes much about her earlier life experiences in Romania as well as her feeling disconnected from her own familial unit.You know who else she makes me think of?Paul Celan. There seems to be some linguistic and other similarities between the two. I'm now looking at Atemschaukel which is her latest work and will be reviewing it here shortly.